Before she died in 2010, Vista actress Sandra Ellis-Troy hoped to make the trip to Bountiful.

Bountiful is the fictional town where elderly, determined widow Carrie Watts wants to go home to die in Horton Foote’s play “The Trip to Bountiful.” Kristianne Kurner, executive artistic director of New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, had planned to produce the play starring Ellis-Troy, but she shelved the project when the 68-year-old actress passed away unexpectedly in her sleep.

Now, one of Ellis-Troy’s closest friends, award-winning San Diego actress Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, will play Carrie Watts in her memory at New Village this month.

Foote wrote “Bountiful” in 1953 for an all-white cast, but it has been staged twice in recent years with a mixed-race cast, and it returns to Broadway in April with a production starring Cicely Tyson and Cuba Gooding Jr. New Village’s “Trip to Bountiful,” Kurner says, is only the third professional production in U.S. history with black actors.

Kurner discovered “Bountiful” as a teen when she saw the film, then attended the 2006 Broadway staging, where Foote spoke to the audience after the show.

“It was one of those theater experiences I’ll never forget. The audience was transported,” said Kurner, who is directing “Bountiful.”

The play is set in 1940s Houston, where Carrie shares a cramped apartment with her overprotective son, Ludie, and his controlling wife, Jessie Mae. For five years, the embittered Carrie has repeatedly tried to go home to Bountiful, but they’ve stopped her each time. Finally, she escapes and makes the trek, rediscovering herself and her past along the way.

Kurner said she couldn’t imagine anyone playing the indomitable Carrie better than Ellis-Troy until she saw Thompson’s award-winning performance last year as Mama in Moxie Theatre’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

“Just watching her work struck me so powerfully that this was Carrie Watts,” Kurner said. “There’s an earthiness, a groundedness, an inner strength and a dignity to that character that M’Lafi possesses naturally.”

Just as in “Raisin,” where she channeled the spirit of her grandmother, Thompson said Ellis-Troy is speaking through her in “Bountiful.”

“She has been inhabiting me and she’s around me all the time,” said Thompson, a Chicago native. “Sandy and I always talked about journeys and going home, and ‘Bountiful’ has been my journey. All of my elders have passed on, and I’m in a constant mode of wanting to go back to Louisiana, Mo., where my grandparents are buried.”

Thompson said she’s been struck by how well Foote wrote roles for women and how he understood the human need for connection. “Foote had an absolute thirst for the human spirit. That’s why Carrie wants to go home. She wants to recover the dignity and peace that she’s lost along the way,” Thompson said.

To re-imagine “Bountiful” with a black Watts family, Kurner and Thompson researched the racial strife and segregation in 1940s Texas. But ultimately they decided to leave race out of the story entirely.

“It’s a very tricky situation but we decided to take some artistic license. Theater does not have to be completely realistic,” Kurner said. “Bountiful is a place she’s trying to get back to that no longer exists. There’s that element of magic in her memories. It’s not about her stories about how she defines herself through them and how they change with time.”

Thompson said she has fought all of her adult life over racial specificity in casting to ensure more roles for people of color, but for this production, paying too much attention to race "would've harmed a perfectly told story."

“I said: ‘Why do they have to be black or white? These people are the epitome of every human being on the face of this earth, so why can’t we all just be pretty?’ ” Thompson said. “Let the audience hear the journey of a beautiful woman who loves her son dearly, loves her childhood dearly and loves life, but needs some answers before she goes.”

February is Black History Month, and local stages are bursting with plays with African-American themes and casts.

Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson said she and her fellow black actors in San Diego are always grateful for the work and for the number of productions on African-American themes that are produced in San Diego at this time of year, though she said she wouldn't mind if the work was spread out a little more evenly throughout the year.

"Most black actors are working right now. That's a wonderful thing to be able to say and I applaud the theaters for that. But, hey, what about July? We're busy in January and February but we're poor for the rest of the year sometimes."

“Clybourne Park”

San Diego Repertory

Theatre presents Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 story of two families, 50 years apart, living in the same Chicago home where Lorraine Hansberry set her landmark drama “A Raisin in the Sun.” Through Sunday. (619) 544-1000 or sdrep.org

“Gem of the Ocean” Cygnet Theatre presents the mystical first play in August Wilson’s 10-part cycle on the black experience in 20th-century America. Through Feb. 24. (619) 337-1525 or cygnettheatre.com

“The Brothers Size” The Old Globe presents Tarell Alvin McCraney’s three-character drama infused with hip-hop music and African mythology and dance, set on the Louisiana bayou. Through Feb.

24 in the Globe’s Sheryl

and Harvey White Theatre. (619) 234-5623 or oldglobe.org

“The Bluest Eye” Mo´olelo and Moxie Theatre co-present Lydia Diamond’s stage adaptation of Toni Morrison’s controversial novel about two young black girls growing up in a foster home in 1930s Ohio. Through March 3